artwork: nicolaes berchem
Memento
Mori Minnesota
by Sarah Busse
End
of June. In a few patches
in
the upper reaches green
turns
orange—the early
stages.
Minnesota
the
Middle Ages, never far
from
death, from dark, from winter.
Here,
only doctors
and
cereal boxes
talk
any sense.
Eat
fiber. Say your prayers.
The
Renaissance
was
born in a temperate
zone,
with more lenient
weather,
a kinder clime
altogether,
where
sublime
angels of perspective
tread
the balmy air tuning
their
lute strings. Of course
we
know all along
those
trees are wrong, but,
when
we learn a friend might
have
cancer, we don’t talk of it
with
the windows open,
for
fear our neighbor, Fate,
might
hear. When she knocks,
we
don’t open our door.
~
first published in White Pelican Review
